“Educators act ethically and maintain the integrity, credibility and reputation of the profession.”

This standard is loaded with words that are hard to pin down. “Ethics” implies an ethical standard, an idea of right and wrong. It is very easy (and common) to say “well obviously we know right and wrong, it’s not subjective it’s something you just know.” I would argue it is not something we know internally, it is something we learn through community. It seems to me that two of the most central features of ethics in Canada are empathy and a belief in equality for all. In terms of rights we focus more heavily on the rights of the individual over the rights of the community, though among younger people there is a trend to police individual rights for the sake of safety for marginalized people. I believe the ethical expectations towards teaching revolve around student safety and equity in instruction and discipline.

Integrity, credibility and reputation are all communal properties, a measure of how society feels about educators as a whole. Integrity is about our ability to adhere to our ethics, and the degree to which others believe we will hold to our ethics. Credibility ties closely into this second point, being a measure of the trust that others have in us as teachers of information, as arbiters of what is true, and as executors of a standard of conduct. Reputation is a summary of all of these points, a collective representation of how people feel when they think of educators. Education is an ancient and highly social profession, one that has arisen and evolved out of society’s desire to pass on knowledge to the young. If we as Canadian public educators are perceived to be failing at this objective, to be unworthy of parents’ trust, or to be acting out of self interest then society will collectively remove us as the agents of passing on knowledge. This can already be seen in the trend towards home schooling by parents who consider SOGI to be indoctrination.

Education for reconciliation (rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca)

For me the elephant in the room on this standard is the history of residential schools. There is no equity or credibility if Indigenous students do not arrive at favorable learning outcomes, and at present they are not succeeding in BC schools. The link between trust, equity and learning is very clear in this case: if students don’t feel safe in class, if they feel like they aren’t supposed to be there, if their caregivers don’t want to be involved, and if the class is not presented in a way that is accessible to them then they will not be in a learning headspace.